


MCU Meta: the directory

by Domenika Marzione (domarzione)



Category: Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. (TV), Captain America (Movies), Captain America - All Media Types, Marvel (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Assassination, Hydra (Marvel), Loss of Virginity, Meta, Military, Military Backstory, NCOs are awesome, Politics, Sex, Social Experiments, Timelines, World War II, Worldbuilding, the soldiering life
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2014-07-18
Updated: 2016-07-09
Packaged: 2018-02-09 08:40:31
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 9
Words: 7,917
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1976394
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/domarzione/pseuds/Domenika%20Marzione
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Bits of meta, mostly about Captain America and HYDRA, previously posted in other forums but now collected here. </p><p>1) Steve is blushing, but no virgin.<br/>2) The military record of Sergeant James 'Bucky' Barnes.<br/>3) The Winter Soldier probably didn't kill the Starks.<br/>4) HYDRA: the ultimate rebranding<br/>5) There's a significant time gap between Bucky Barnes's death and Steve Rogers's.<br/>6) RMA and the MCU: a blasterless history<br/>7) Sam Wilson and the RL requirements for being a USAF pararescueman<br/>8) Civil War speculative meta: the magic bullet<br/>9) Much more than Steve's height and weight is public knowledge.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Virtue

**Author's Note:**

  * Translation into 中文 available: [MCU Meta: the directory](https://archiveofourown.org/works/2253906) by [Helice](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Helice/pseuds/Helice)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Steve is blushing, but no virgin by the time he gets to Europe.

Steve might have been blushing, but he was no virgin by the time he got to Europe and rescued Bucky in Italy. He was a lamb among the wolves on his USO and war bond tours, a polite and decent innocent among the voracious Hollywood actresses and aspiring showgirls and they took advantage because Steve got into trouble once the first polite refusal was ignored. (He always refused at first, because he’s a nice boy, but he never really felt bad about the inevitable conquering because while he’s a gentleman, he’s not a saint and he _wants_.) Golden Age Hollywood was no better behaved than current Hollywood, but they had studios and complicit media working to hide it better. Steve, built like he was and clearly not out to play bedroom bingo or likely to brag about it afterward, wasn’t a refreshing change — he was a challenge to be met.

Marlene Dietrich, who did yeoman’s work for the troops as a frontline entertainer, took numerous lovers throughout her career and probably ate Steve alive. And yes, Peggy absolutely reminds Steve of her, although he won’t tell Peggy this because he knows Peggy knows (about Marlene, absolutely, about the others, he kind of suspects but certainly isn’t going to ask). Dietrich wasn't the only one, although Steve was never really promiscuous by anyone's metric, and he remembers almost all of them fondly. 

[He reluctantly tells Bucky, who presses until Steve spills. Bucky listens with a mixture of slack-jawed awe and glee and pride. And envy, but he can’t really begrudge Steve for making up for lost time with Marlene Dietrich, even if she had to club him over the head and drag him back to her hotel. That part, Bucky is totally unsurprised by.]

Peggy expects him to have learned something from his experiences, at least with respect to dealing with women who are attracted to him, but he hasn’t, not really. He’s got no radar for subtle signals and he’s never made the first move and it takes Peggy a while to realize this. And even longer be charmed by what it means instead of frustrated and irritated and not a little hurt. He is still the man she met at Camp Lehigh, still waiting for the right partner, and she regrets, after his crash, that it took her so long to realize it.


	2. The life and times of Sergeant James ‘Bucky’ Barnes

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Bucky Barnes's war began before the movie did.

(1) At the start of _Captain America: the First Avenger,_ Bucky has been a soldier for a while and a very good one. Whether Bucky enlisted or was drafted, he went to basic training and he emerged some flavor of private or, in truly exceptional circumstances, a corporal. Nobody comes out of basic a sergeant, which is an NCO (non-commissioned officer) rank and one of responsibility. When we meet Bucky in the movie, he's been a soldier for a while, long enough for at least one promotion up to E-5, two or three promotions being much more likely. Which is a lot in a short amount of time – about a year-and-a-half past Pearl Harbor, less time in service assuming Bucky didn't ship off to basic in 1941. As such, I've usually written Bucky as getting a field promotion for valor in combat because things just don't happen that quickly. It's still a speedy trip to sergeant, but it's not completely ridiculous.

Any way you want to play it, when Steve is asking Bucky if he's gotten his orders, he's not asking brand-new-soldier Bucky about his first chance to be a 'real' soldier. He's asking probably-home-on-leave Sergeant Barnes where he's going _next_.

[I am very much aware that it was possible for someone to earn a sergeant's stripes during WWII without having seen much or any action, especially as the draft swelled the ranks faster than the natural process of NCO-creation could accommodate. But Bucky wasn't one of those special cases. On the display in the Smithsonian in CA:TWS, it says that Bucky enlisted shortly after Pearl Harbor, which puts him in uniform well before 1943. Which makes it far more likely that he went through training and promotion at a more natural pace. It also saves him from having a Damsel in Distress status within the narrative -- he didn't go to war completely unprepared, only to get captured right off the bat and had to wait for Steve to save him.]

(2) Bucky has experience leading small units – a team, a squad. He might have already been a platoon sergeant, but no sure thing. Regardless, by the time he's rescued by Steve, he's an experienced NCO. He knows how to get things done, both with respect to regular Army crap and the corralling and maintenance of the men in his unit. He understands how the division of labor between CO and NCOIC works out, that he is the sheepdog to the CO's shepherd when it comes to executing orders and handling the men. He also understands that the relationship between platoon sergeant and platoon commander is a separate thing between them and has a public face, which is united and in which the NCO is proper and respectful of rank, and a private face, which is more informal and generally reflects the fact that the NCO has more life and military experience than the officer and has an obligation to use those experiences to improve the officer and keep everyone from getting killed.

(3) Both points above matter when it comes to Sergeant Barnes and Captain Rogers, especially because the latter was commissioned as a captain and has never had a command position before at any level and truly and completely knows nothing about nothing about leading anyone anywhere to do anything in some form of proper military fashion. Bucky's instruction necessarily doesn't begin once he's team sergeant on the Howling Commandos – it begins during the rescue, the minute he realizes that he's not having a drug-induced hallucination and Steve really is Captain America and needs all the help that he can get because Steve doesn't know what the hell he's doing. Even if Steve doesn't confess that right away, which he probably will, Bucky knows him well enough to tell.

(4) As important as Sergeant Barnes's experience is to Captain Rogers, it's possibly even more important to Brooklyn's Own Bucky Barnes. Who has been through hell on the battlefield, an even worse hell in Zola's and Schmidt's lab, and is now presented with a very hard truth: Steve Rogers doesn't need him anymore. Steve is no longer frail by many metric; he doesn't need defending or nurturing, he doesn't need anyone to advertise his virtues or prop up his self-esteem because everyone else now knows exactly how awesome Captain America is. Steve is no longer short of friends or invisible to women or at the mercy of either his ailments or the neighborhood bullies. Every single protective function Bucky has ever filled for Steve out of friendship and brotherhood has now been rendered moot. Thankfully, while Steve may not need him for anything but companionship anymore, Captain Rogers needs him for a hell of a lot. Steve may be quicker in mind and body, but Bucky is the one who knows how to make everything happen. And that won't change even as Steve learns the ropes; Captain Rogers will always need Sergeant Barnes. And that's probably a comfort to Bucky at a time when little else is.

 And now the self-referential part, because I'm like that:

 [ **Antediluvian** ](http://archiveofourown.org/works/947168/chapters/1871599)and [**La Caduta**](http://archiveofourown.org/works/947168/chapters/1884309): the former is Bucky's pre-movie war career and the latter is his imprisonment, where he struggles to be an NCOIC while also being a lab rat, through the rescue and the formation of the Howling Commandos.

[ **Recursive**](http://archiveofourown.org/works/1547360), which is a Steve(-and-Bucky) story, but mostly about the Howling Commandos and Steve's CO-NCOIC relationships with both Bucky and Dum Dum Dugan (after Bucky's fall) matter a lot.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This was [originally posted on Tumblr](http://laporcupina.tumblr.com/post/92790191939/the-life-and-times-of-sergeant-james-bucky-barnes).


	3. A Matter of Efficiency

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> HYDRA had other options than to defrost the Winter Soldier to take care of the Starks.

I know that there's that interview the Russo brothers did where they say that they meant to imply that the Winter Soldier had killed Howard and Maria Stark, but I find it pretty unlikely. Assuming it was a car accident and not anything more exotic, which Occam's razor says was probably the case because those are easy enough to fake and the personalities involved make it plausible.

Winter Soldier was kept in cryo between missions because he was too important to waste on small stuff. Fiddling with a car, puncturing a brake line, or some other subtle sabotage that would survive the undoubtedly thorough post-crash investigation, that’s small stuff. You don’t defrost your best asset, refresh his mental conditioning, update him on current events/technology/geography and teach him how to futz with whatever makes and models Howard had in his garage at the time just for a car accident, even the car accident of an important person. You leave him in the freezer and get someone else to do it. Especially if HYDRA agents were already thick on the ground inside SHIELD and very likely Stark Industries.

Now Marvel — and fanficcers — can play it however they like, but I’m more likely to believe that Obediah Stane was HYDRA and took care of it himself, either with his own two hands or the hiring-out, than Winter Soldier. Stane was enjoying the power and money, but that’s not exclusive to fomenting the kind of trouble — by selling weapons to terrorists — that gave agencies like SHIELD more authority and justified escalations like Project Insight. Not saying that I think it _was_ Stane, just that I think him more likely than the Winter Soldier. 


	4. Hail HYDRA, the ultimate in rebranding

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> HYDRA stopped being about the Nazis early on. It only made them more dangerous.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A history of the spread of post-war HYDRA ideology follows. It was written to provide a context for the [Freezer Burn series ](http://archiveofourown.org/series/38432)continuing into a post- _CA:TWS_ environment (this is not me saying that will happen, but in order for it to be possible, this needs to happen first), but if you take out the names I need and insert ones like Alexander Pierce’s, I think it works just fine as MCU-compliant.

HYDRA stopped being just about science almost immediately, before Johann Schmidt ever heard of Steve Rogers. The science was always a means to an end, a striving for efficiency in a world system that tended to chaos. Schmidt's formative experiences were World War I, the unspeakable humiliation of the Versailles treaty, and then the Weimar Republic; it's no surprise he thought he could do it better. Once Schmidt had his paws on the Tesseract, he finally had a tool that allowed him to think on a grander scale. He'd had time, by that point, to form opinions on what Hitler was doing right and what he was doing very wrong and he was quite sure he could do better. The Tesseract would allow him to try. But, in the end, it wasn't enough. 

Schmidt was the first to move HYDRA away from its Aryan roots, remove the racial and ethnic biases that informed an organization created by the Nazis and spawned from the Ahnenerbe. He was the first to see the potential of the Third World as lab in the non-medical-experimentation way, a place to organize social units and society both overtly and covertly, as cells within an oblivious society and as a substitute society in a failed state. The post-war, post-colonial period was crushing on the Third World, with poverty and ridiculous politics endemic as new nations struggled to invent themselves free of the imperial training wheels; many failed and most bloodily. From this, starting in the early 1960's, when Schmidt was freed from his 'prison' and at liberty to roam the world on his own terms, Schmidt and HYDRA built up generations of believers, men and women who saw HYDRA as the only entity capable of providing the real necessities — shelter, safety, food — in a local environment full of privation and danger.

HYDRA became a force for good at a time when the supposed benevolent powers couldn't be bothered. HYDRA looked upon the the First World with disdain, worse than useless because they claimed to be well-intentioned but were in fact cowardly and self-interested, either refusing to walk the talk of their supposedly strongly held values — what else was the Cold War? — or spending their blood and treasure in wasteful fashion when they did act in support of those beliefs. The Soviets were a different flavor of wasted potential, mastering the punishment of the police state without any of the inducements or productivity to provide for/earn support from the people. 

Phase Two came in the 1970s, with the mass migration from the Third World to the First, tens of thousands of Africans and Asians and Indian subcontinentals moving to the US and Europe. Most of them weren't HYDRA, of course, but some were and brought with them their belief in HYDRA's way to world peace through order. Couple that with the general sorry state of political and economic life in the 1970s — strikes, government bankruptcies, government scandals, Vietnam — and the continued social upheaval from the 1960s, made the First World prime for receiving the HYDRA gospel. HYDRA's new adherents drew from both ends of the spectrum, the liberal/progressive and the conservative. This was the time of the radical left, the Black Panthers and the Weather Underground and the Red Army Faction, the PLO chic in France, etc., and the idea of a militant response to social ills — for that is what HYDRA offers — was a natural part of that zeitgeist. On the right, an organized response to social upheaval, a promise of peace and order, had a similar attraction. 

The fall of the Iron Curtain and the end of the Cold War didn't change HYDRA's plans per se. The fall of the Wall opened up the Warsaw Pact countries to the same surrogacy offers HYDRA had made to new and failed states for the last half-century, an offer that grew in appeal as newly unmoored-from-Moscow Eastern European economies failed and impoverished states fell into gangsterism and war and the sort of political incompetence and corruption that had befallen other regions generations earlier. Latveria was the sole exception, led carefully and well and if you want to know where Victor von Doom's hatred of HYDRA comes from, it's from having spent the 1990s watching HYDRA prey on the vulnerable, which in turn he had not much sympathy for because they took the easy option, the path of least resistance, handing over their dignity and honor to HYDRA rather than fight for their own nation on their own terms. 

HYDRA had no problems recruiting in the post-Cold War era. The 1990s were a violent decade, starting with the first Gulf War and then into the horrifying violence and depravity and death of the implosion of Yugoslavia and the Rwandan Genocide and everything that happened in Somalia, among other lowlights. The First World was no better than anywhere else, just with less bloodshed; there was no “peace dividend” in the West, no glorious post-communist flourishing in Eastern Europe — a few years after the end of the Cold War, the Russians were watching Yeltsin fumble, the Americans were impeaching Clinton. Japan went from industrial powerhouse to the Lost Decade. 

And then came 9/11. 

Phase Three was begun in the mid-oughts. It would not have been possible merely after 9/11 or the invasion of Iraq; it required a more international involvement. The bombings in Madrid and London were necessary pieces — total war against soft targets to galvanize populations that might have otherwise been content to let the Americans suffer for their hubris. The chaos of the Middle East, from Iraq and Afghanistan to Iran's internal spasms and external support of terrorism all the way through to the Arab Spring, the growing restiveness of young China against Beijing's control, the evolution of Putin's Russia, these were all necessary but not sufficient — every revolutionary knows that you can't win with the rabble alone, you must have the participation of the educated and professional classes to succeed. HYDRA needed critical mass inside Western Europe and the US. 

After years of economic trouble — the banks, the mortgage crises, the recessions, the unemployment, the bailouts of EU member nations by other member nations, etc. — HYDRA decided that conditions were close to optimal. After generations of expanding the welfare state and the tools of societal organization, governments had more power over their citizens than ever before. Even as, within the EU, governments had less control over themselves than ever before, presaging a centralized HYDRA control over all states. Technology allowed unparalleled access to information and ever-expanding methods of surveillance and control and the citizenry had allowed that control to be expanded beyond state security requirements, however they were defined. 

Phase Four was more aided than impeded by the 'Era of Heroes' beginning with Tony Stark's decision to don the Iron Man armor. Stark himself was not a problem; he was a glitzy spectacle, unreliable and ill-defined, everything he had been in industry but encased in armor and able to fly. Stark wasn't out to save the world or make life better for everyone; he was out to right the wrongs that penetrated his very rarefied bubble and that was only when he was sober. Thor was an outright boon to HYDRA, revealing the location of the Tesseract while also confirming that there were other objects of great occult power if they could get them. But more importantly, it sent SHIELD and other governmental security agencies into panic mode because of the now-confirmed threat of extraterrestrial life — they're out there and they can pretty easily kill us. The liberty not sacrificed for security after 9/11 was whittled down even more. And further still after the Battle of New York. 

HYDRA was aware of the discovery of Captain America as soon as it happened, as well as of his miraculous survival. Schmidt saw it as a sign, proof of the rightness of the moment. That Steve didn't immediately return to action was irrelevant. When he did return, to fight in the Battle of New York and then to reclaim his place in the public eye, HYDRA saw it as an opportunity: Captain America, who time and legend had turned into a figure of immense popular power, drew the eyes and hopes of all. And he once again bore his shield to do battle on behalf of a governmental agency, validating that agency's agenda by his participation in it. Fury was happy to use him to grease the wheels of his own plans, not realizing that by doing so, he was bringing HYDRA that much closer to its goal.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This was [originally posted on Tumblr, where it can be reblogged](http://laporcupina.tumblr.com/post/91777580734/meta-monday-a-hydra-for-the-twenty-first-century).


	5. Cap1 Timeline: between the train and the plane

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> There's a significant time gap between Bucky Barnes's death and Steve Rogers's.

Because I am being something of a wind-up hot air machine of late, more meta. This is mostly in response to some comments/questions I've gotten about the timeline in _Captain America: the First Avenger_ and why I've chosen to assume a significant gap in time between when Bucky falls off the train and when Steve's plane goes down. (It's actually a plot point in _[Recursive](http://archiveofourown.org/works/1547360)_ , but I've always had the gap there, from _[Freezer Burn](http://archiveofourown.org/works/457359)_ on.) Especially when there's a lot of fanon that has Steve's 'death' taking place a day or two after Bucky's, I am apparently a bit of an outlier. 

I usually write the two events taking place 6-9 months apart, with Bucky falling in the early autumn of 1944 and Steve going down in the spring of '45. I honestly can't imagine the timeline being so compressed as to have Bucky and Steve go their frozen ends within 24 or 48 or 72 hours of each other. I understand the romance of it (in both the traditional and 'shippy senses), but my realism kink kicks in hard. 

There wasn't a montage in the movie to indicate the passage of time, but we pretty much have to assume a significant duration between Bucky's 'death' and Steve's because there's too much to do. 

Things that happen on screen between the train and the plane:

  1. The Howling Commandos have to get Zola off the train and through enemy-held territory and then to wherever he's going to be held, possibly London.
  2. Colonel Phillips has his conversations with Zola where he warns Zola that he cost Cap his BFF and gets Schmidt's location.
  3. The mission to Johann Schmidt's base has to be planned.
  4. Steve fails to get drunk and Peggy tells him to respect Bucky's agency.
  5. Everyone shleps back to the Alps to carry out the mission.



Accomplishing this in a 2-3 day duration would be a feat of some magic in 2014; in 1945 it would have been so far into the realm of impossible that radio contact was lost. Some of these steps took days, some weeks, some months. And they didn't all happen one after the other without a break.

1) It probably took the Commandos a couple of days to get Zola back to the SSR. Even if they had an excellent exit strategy off the train and then to a rally point to get everyone back together quickly, they still had to get themselves and Zola out of Axis-held territory. At best, which is probable to assume because Zola was such a high value target, they had a plane they could use -- one that they would have to meet at some non-airport field far away from anti-aircraft batteries and nowhere near where the Luftwaffe was still putting up fighters. It would be a slower propeller plane because jet engines were just starting out in 1944 and only in fighters. Depending on where the plane was coming from and where they were and how far they had to go to avoid detection/getting shot down by either the Nazis or their own people, they would need to land and refuel before setting off again for their final destination. At worst -- if the plane never arrives or if it has trouble -- they're driving to Allied-held ground and waiting for a new ride there.

2) Zola didn't give up the goods right away, no matter what protections and inducements he was offered by what would become (in 1945) Operation Paperclip. Nobody would have believed him if he had, but also he needed time to assess his situation and, arguably more importantly, assess Schmidt's and HYDRA's. Especially if you'd like to grant Zola the possibility that he was playing a long con and had anticipated something like Paperclip and was looking to the future. He wouldn't have given the SSR what they needed to take down Schmidt until he had accepted that Schmidt was doomed and/or that the sacrifice of Schmidt was to the greater good of HYDRA. Which it most certainly was not in the days after Zola's capture. The odds are that Zola took his sweet time before he said anything of import -- and everything he said had to be independently verified -- and even longer before he told them where Schmidt was. And in all that time, the Commandos weren't sitting around waiting; they were back in the field.

3-5) Once they have Schmidt's location, planning the details of the mission is not something they could have done in an afternoon. [Or, this is where my realism & bureaucracy kinks kick in bigtime.] 

(a) The research stage alone would have taken days, probably a couple of weeks. They'd need maps, hopefully reliable ones. They'd need aerial reconnaissance images -- which means someone has to get a ride on a plane, take the photos, bring the film back to the SSR base, and develop them, hoping to hell that they turned out okay. Same with ground surveillance reports and imagery. All of this will have to be transmitted (likely by hand) back to the SSR and then turned over to analysts and specialists to interpret and make useful.

Some of the questions that would have to be answered before they could do anything: What's the terrain like? What's the weather like? Are there roads (the map they found may say yes, but the map is from 1934 or 1914 and nobody knows what HYDRA -- or the Allies -- have done to it since) and how wide are they and what are they made of? Who is in the area -- Axis forces, HYDRA, Allied forces, civilians -- and is any Allied activity planned for the region? What's the population of the base and how well trained/armed are they? What kind of defenses are there -- air and ground?

(b) Acquiring the materiel and logistical and personnel support necessary -- this was not just a Commandos mission -- would have taken forever. Partly because the Allies were all over Europe by this point and supply lines occasionally broke down, as did the tools of warfare themselves. Even when Phillips got authorization for the loans of the infantrymen (the SSR did not have a private army at its disposal) and the extra guns and the planes and the heavy weapons, physically having hands on them -- and getting them where they needed to be -- was another story and another headache entirely.

(c) And that's before we get to the bureaucratic bullshit and territoriality portion of the program. Chester Phillips spent 80% of his time fending off predators from his own side. In actual history, the OSS (Office of Strategic Services, the precursor of the CIA) spent a lot of energy fighting off powerful people wearing the same colors who didn't want it to exist. The War Department -- and the Army and Navy -- had its own intelligence units and didn't see the need for a duplication of services. J Edgar Hoover over at the FBI wasn't too thrilled with their existence, either. Nobody was very fond of spies in general. All of these entities had powerful backers in important places puffing up their own team and pooping on the others. The agencies themselves were all perfectly happy to sabotage each other in DC, in Eisenhower's circle, in the field. They hid information, they stole equipment, they actively failed to offer assistance when it would have been damned useful. They were unhelpful.

All of which means that Phillips saying to anyone: "We need a battalion of infantry, we need tanks, we need trucks, we need planes for both transport and air support, we need our people helped into and out of sketchy places to do recon, we need fuel, we need bullets, we need rations..." is not going to be met with a "sure!" not even if Phillips told them that they were going after Schmidt. Which he might not have done because someone would have used it as justification to take the mission away from the SSR and he might not have been able to stop them.

Little tl;dr: the fight to get the men, machines, and materiel where they needed to be to stage this assault was ugly, long, and brutal. The actual collection and transportation of all of the required resources couldn't have been done in hours, let alone days.

Big, summary TL;DR: Steve had plenty of time to grieve Bucky's death before facing his own.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This entry was [originally posted on Tumblr](http://laporcupina.tumblr.com/post/92481351569/cap-meta-the-time-gap-between-buckys-fall-and-steves). Feel free to reblog there if you'd like.


	6. RMA and the MCU: a blasterless history

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The post-WWII ban on HYDRA blaster weapons was quickly developed and comprehensively enforced or else the MCU would look like a far different place than our own.

After WWII, there has to be an equivalent to the [Geneva Protocol](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geneva_Protocol) for HYDRA energy weapons, something banning the possession of blasters in any format, from the main weapons on tanks down to the little pistols, and authorizing the safe destruction of any stockpiles or newly discovered caches. And there have to be unbearable sanctions against the development of weapons that are similar in scope.

After the war, everyone must have had a few HYDRA toys. The Soviets and the Americans had the most as far as governments, but the more portable varieties turn up in civilian hands everywhere as either war souvenirs (the way Lugers did, f'rex) or squirreled away by criminals and tyrants for nefarious use or collected by revolutionary hopefuls looking to make a play in the unsettled post-war environment. 

(There was a lot of gunfighting in the decade after WWII, from the end of colonialism to the Chinese communist revolution to the Korean War, just to start. What happens to history if there are HYDRA tanks or blasters in Shanghai or Algiers or Palestine or Athens or Inchon or any place else shots were fired? Answer: a lot, no matter which side is holding them. It's a weapon that can't be defended against and, when it can be, that protection will be expensive and incomplete. The effects from this will spiral outward as history progresses -- what does the civil rights movement look like if both sides could discharge blasters legally and the bodies would never be found? What does non-state-actor terrorism look like?) 

Getting HYDRA weapons out of the hands of not only lawful citizens, but also and especially law _less_ ones has to be done effectively for the MCU to look remotely like our world. 

From a military technology perspective, the ban on blaster-derived weaponry has to be almost totally effective. It's pretty much the only way we can explain why HYDRA was using the blasters in 1944 but the US Army's still running around with M16s and M4s in 2008 and the Kalashnikov is still the bulk-source weapon of choice for bad guys. 

There are going to be loopholes and gaps and whatnot; there have to be. And into those gaps you can drop everything that's peculiar to the MCU and not in our world -- the Helicarriers, for instance, or the Falcon project, or anything to do with the arc reactor even if that's in private hands. There's going to be a little bit of RMA bleedthrough no matter what. 

But there had to have been a serious _and successful_ effort to purge the world (and thus history) of HYDRA weapons starting with Yalta and Potsdam and moving forward. In 2014, when HYDRA tried their Insight putsch, they didn't even use their own historical weapons, they used standard-issue. They had extensive accoutrements to control the Winter Soldier secreted near DC but couldn't manage a weapons stash of blasters, which probably indicates that there weren't many to hand. If they'd had one to give to the Winter Soldier, he'd have been carrying it. If they'd had one to kill Steve Rogers with, we'd have seen it because that was one body Pierce never wanted anyone to find.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This entry was originally [posted on Tumblr](http://laporcupina.tumblr.com/post/107127731374/rma-and-the-mcu).


	7. Sam Wilson, actual badass

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The requirements for becoming a USAF pararescueman. Or, why Sam really wasn't kidding when he said that he did everything Steve did, just more slowly.

Sam Wilson in the MCU is a pararescueman (pararescue jumper, aka PJ) in the US Air National Guard. I don’t think there’s any official statement on his age or military career vis-à-vis how long he was active-duty before transitioning into the reserves – odds are that he would have needed to be active-duty to be considered for the Falcon program – or his rank or even his DOD status, whether he’s officially out, still a reservist, on IRR, or what. So there’s flexibility there to do what you will, I think, within certain ranges. Sam is, however, an enlisted man and not a commissioned officer. I usually put him at E-6, Technical Sergeant.

Sam in fanon is usually the team therapist, based on his role as a counselor-type person for veterans groups. What I’d like to suggest, however, is that Sam could (should?) more often be portrayed as the team _medic_ and someone who is far less risk-averse than he is often shown. He is really going to be the last person to facepalm and tell Steve not to jump out of perfectly good aircraft without a parachute because he wasn’t kidding when he said he does everything Steve does, except slower. PJs are _extremely_ well-trained, both in emergency medical treatment and advanced military skills – they are the most badass EMTs you will ever meet and have an extraordinarily high regard within the military community.

 **The PAST - Physical Ability and Stamina Test** (adapted from [here](http://www.military.com/military-fitness/air-force-special-operations/air-force-para-rescue))

To become a PJ you must be male, a proficient swimmer, and meet physical standards of at least 100 points on the Physical Ability and Stamina Test (PAST). This job is open to only enlisted troops. Here are the specific minimums to becoming a PJ but the numbers in the parenthesis are recommended scores from Spec Ops trainers:

\- 2 x 25 m sub surface swim no time limit  
\- 500 m swim 10:07 or less (sub 9 min)  
\- 30 min rest  
\- 1.5 mile run 9:47 or less (sub 9 min)  
\- 10 min rest  
\- 10 pull ups min (20 )  
\- 2 min rest  
\- 58 sit ups min (100 )  
\- 2 min rest  
\- 54 push ups min (100)

 **The USAF ‘pipeline’ for pararescuemen** (adapted from [here](https://www.pararescue.com/recruiting/the-pipeline)):

Basic Military Training (BMT, Basic) : 9 weeks, Lackland AFB  
  
AF Pararescue Development Course : 2 weeks, Lackland

> This two-week course provides physical training under the oversight of sports physiologists and swimming trainers to familiarize and teach the trainees the required skills required to succeed in the indoctrination course to follow. Instructors provide student-athlete centered coaching in running, calisthenics, swimming, water confidence, Pararescue history, roles and responsibilities, career field duties, team building skills, sports nutrition, exercise physiology, and psychological enhancement training.

AF Pararescue Indoctrination Course: 9 weeks, Lackland

> The mission of the Indoctrination Course is to recruit, train, and select future Pararescuemen. At this school you will participate in extensive physical conditioning, to include swimming, running, weight training and calisthenics. This course helps prepare you for the rigors of training and the demands of this career. Other training accomplished at this course includes physiological training, dive physics, metric manipulations, medical terminology, dive terminology, history, and leadership laboratories. Graduation of this course is your ticket to ride the pipeline and begin learning the skills that make PJ’s highly regarded special operators.

Air Force Combat Diver Course: 6 weeks, Navy Diving and Salvage Training Center, Panama City, Florida

> The primary focus of Air Force Combat Diver Course is to develop Pararescuemen into competent, capable and safe combat divers/swimmers. This course provides diver training through classroom instruction, extensive physical training, surface and sub-surface water confidence pool exercises, pool familiarization dives, day/night tactical open water surface/sub-surface infiltration swims, open/closed circuit diving procedures and underwater search and recovery procedures.

Air Force Underwater Egress Training 1 day, Fairchild Air Force Base, Washington

> Survival, evasion, resistance and escape specialists at Fairchild, AFB train aircrews how to safely escape from an aircraft that has landed in the water. Instruction includes principles, procedures and techniques necessary to escape a sinking aircraft. This one-day course is dedicated to underwater egress from an aircraft and primarily focuses on rotary wing aircrew.

Air Force Basic Survival School: 3 weeks, Fairchild Air Force Base, Washington

> This course teaches basic survival techniques for remote areas - using minimal equipment. This includes instruction of principles, procedures, equipment, and techniques which enable individuals to survive, regardless of climatic conditions or unfriendly environments, and return home with honor.

Army Airborne School: 3 weeks, Fort Benning, Georgia

> The United States Army Airborne School - widely known as Jump School - conducts the basic paratrooper training. This is where PJ’s learn the basic parachuting skills required to infiltrate an objective area by static line airdrop. This course includes ground operations week, tower week, and jump week where trainees make 5 actual parachute jumps. Personnel who complete this training are awarded the basic parachutist rating and are allowed to wear the coveted parachutists wings.

Army Military Freefall Parachutist School: 5 weeks, Fort Bragg, North Carolina and Yuma Proving Grounds, Arizona

> This course instructs freefall parachuting (HALO) using the high performance ram air canopy. The course provides wind tunnel training, in-air instruction focusing on student stability, aerial maneuvers, air sense, and parachute opening procedures. Each student receives a minimum of 30 freefall jumps including 2 day and 2 night jumps with oxygen equipment and field gear.

Air Force Pararescue EMT-Paramedic Course: 22 weeks, Kirtland Air Force Base, New Mexico

> This course teaches how to manage trauma patients prior to evacuation and provide emergency medical treatment. Phase I is four weeks of emergency medical technician basic (EMT-B) training. Phase II lasts 20 weeks and provides instruction in minor field surgery, pharmacology, combat trauma management, advanced airway management and military evacuation procedures. The airmen are then sent to Tucson, Arizona for hands-on medical training. Trainees work alongside paramedics with the Tucson Fire Department as well as local hospitals. Graduates of the course are awarded National Registry of Emergency Medical Technicians-Paramedic (NREMT-P) certification.

Air Force Pararescue Recovery Specialist Course: 24 weeks, Kirtland Air Force Base, New Mexico

> Qualifies airmen as Pararescue Recovery Specialists for assignment to any Pararescue unit worldwide. Training includes field medical care and tactics, mountaineering, combat tactics, advanced parachuting and helicopter insertion/extraction qualifications. At the completion of this course each graduate is awarded the maroon beret.

  
tl;dr: Sam is just as much a pro at the saving people and badassery as anyone in the Avengers and better qualified than most for the former.  
  
And because I do stuff like this: my money where my mouth is: [**_No Angel_**](http://archiveofourown.org/works/1443367)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> [This was originally posted to tumblr, if you'd like to like or reblog there.](http://laporcupina.tumblr.com/post/132949500784/sam-wilson-actual-badass)


	8. Civil War speculative meta: the magic bullet

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> What if _that_ scene from the comics happens in the movie? How do you adapt it for maximum impact?

So there is a plot point in the comics _Civil War_ storyline that [I am pretty darned sure they are using in the movie](http://laporcupina.tumblr.com/post/134090007304/civil-war-trailer-part-the-third), but... a thought problem investigation of how to do it best: easiest, traditional, or maximum impact:

 **The Death of Captain America.** I’m willing to bet a shiny wooden nickel on Steve dying in the movie, to be resurrected during _Infinity Wars_ but with either Bucky or Sam filling in as Cap in the interim. And that maybe [this image](http://40.media.tumblr.com/5990b9b885c3664bced038d24d38e63d/tumblr_o1n3dnIx0Z1tp8a7ro3_1280.jpg) is in preparation for[ this one](http://comics.imakinarium.net/notis/2009/10/091005_homenaje_death_iron_man/alex_maleev_civil_war_confession.jpg).

In the comics, Steve is murdered while doing a perp walk after surrendering at the end of the Civil War, shot to death before hundreds of live witnesses and millions on TV. He is shot by a sniper (Crossbones, although Sam initially thinks Bucky did it), throwing himself in front of bullets that would have otherwise fatally hit his guards -- he dies a hero, even in handcuffs, in the arms of his longtime love, Sharon Carter. 

But that’s just what everyone saw. What actually happened is this: Sharon, under mind control, delivered the fatal wounds up close (or ‘fatal’ because Steve was undeaded later on). Steve didn’t die from Crossbones’s bullets, he died from _Sharon_ ’s. And she quickly remembers this, along with realizing (a) she’s still controlled by Doctor Faustus and (b) _Steve knew_ and forgave her before he died, which does nothing for her mental health -- especially because she’s pregnant with Steve’s child at the time. 

So now let’s look at the movie version of Steve’s death, assuming it still comes on the perp-walk after the fighting is over and[ after one last argument with Tony](http://laporcupina.tumblr.com/post/133372418549/thebendisageofcomics-civil-war-the-confession).

 

**Easiest**

The simplest way to do things is to just have Brock Rumlow shoot Steve on the steps, as he does, and have those be the bullets that kill him. They are presumably not going the Doctor Faustus route in the movies -- it would require far too much setup and I heard he was being used in _Agents of SHIELD_ and that all but eliminates him from the movies. Brock is around, Brock is angry, Brock is capable and a lot scarier in the MCU than the loopy lucha libre he is in the comics. Brock is Steve's murderer, everyone grieves, Bucky goes hellbent for Tony, we move on to either BuckyCap or FalconCap, Steve returns from Valhalla in time for _Infinity Wars_ to end.

 

**Traditional**

It's not that hard to follow the comics and have Sharon, under some influence other than Faustus, shoot Steve. During the Civil War in the comics, Sharon doesn't actually choose Steve's side --or Tony's -- she chooses her own. Sharon is work-first and Steve respects that, even if he doesn't like it sometimes, which is why they are on-again/off-again. Steve and Sharon love each other, but Captain America and Agent 13 are occasionally at odds and that's usually where the problems arise. Steve isn't angry at Sharon during the Civil War, although he makes it clear that he doesn't think much of her choice to remain at SHIELD and be part of the effort to take down unregistered superheroes. Sharon, for her part, makes it clear she doesn't think much of Steve's choice to foment insurrection and cause mass collateral damage. But they also have these conversations (a) when she's bailing him out of trouble and (b) when they run off to have a quickie, so... Bottom line, Sharon is at Steve's side when he dies because she's with SHIELD in the arresting party and Steve's not mad about it.

How do you turn this into the MCU version without the Sharon/Steve backstory? All you have to do is start Sharon/Steve, really, which they have done and will continue to do. Sharon is at Steve's side at various points in the bits of the movie we've seen. And then you co-opt Sam's decision to register and move it up on the timeline. In the comics, Sam registers after Steve's death so he can be present at the official funeral, so that Steve has a friend at the end. He takes a little crap for the choice at the unofficial wake, but everyone understands. Give that side-switching to Sharon before Steve's surrender, but respect her history and have her do it because she feels its necessary, even if that necessary is because Steve asked her to. There's a way to look at [this production still](http://i.imgur.com/Rpw7nDt.jpg) and have Sharon doing what Natasha can't, not as Steve and Sam's ally. That preserves her agency and puts her armed at Steve's side during the perp walk. The only thing that they absolutely cannot do is have Sharon be HYDRA of her own free will -- she shoot Steve because she can't control her actions, not because she is secretly evil.

 

**Maximum Impact**

I'm a big fan of Steve/Sharon in the comics, but getting them to a similar point in the movies would require too much work in an already overstuffed film. So for compactness-in-storytelling reasons, it makes sense to cede Sharon's role in Steve's death to someone with a more established relationship. Someone Steve has long trusted and respected and admired and, maybe, even loved a little in a platonic way because he might be emotionally constipated, but that just means it can't come out easily, not that it's not there. Someone he has been through hell with, someone he has fought alongside, someone who has seen him at his most vulnerable and someone he, in turn, has seen at their most vulnerable -- and it's the latter that matters more because it's a greater concession because they have had to fight like hell to get where they are and vulnerability is not something they've ever allowed themselves. Someone who likes Steve as a person, respects Captain America as a warrior, and still doesn't choose to follow him into the breach because they don't think it's a winnable war and it will come with a lot of collateral damage. Someone who chooses to stay with SHIELD even if it means friends become enemies.

 ** _Natasha kills Steve_**.

Natasha is on Tony's side in the comics and in the movie, although she's not doing it because it's Tony. I've previously written some fic on why she might make this choice [[justifying to Steve](http://archiveofourown.org/works/1453069/chapters/9375339) | [justifying to Clint](http://archiveofourown.org/works/4536126)] and the pragmatism angle _fits_ Natasha in the MCU as it did in the comics. She sees the big picture and understands that a moral stand will do nothing in the end and she's used to sublimating what she personally thinks is right for what is necessary. She knows Tony is right, no matter how much she dislikes it.

Also, she has a history of being under mind control, or at least of not being in control of herself, and the impact of it happening again would be tremendous even if it didn't come with the double-tap of her using her skills to murder a friend. There is no Doctor Faustus, but we don't know anything of what they're doing with Baron Nemo, who is the secret Big Bad in this movie, and giving him means to control Natasha is hardly out of the realm of the possible.

And even if they turned her 'murder' of Steve into the ultimate vehicle of his resurrection -- we will skip the batshittery of how Steve was brought back in the comics -- it won't help her any more than it helped Sharon.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> [This chapter was also posted to tumblr if you'd like to like or reblog there.](http://laporcupina.tumblr.com/post/138351300699/cacw-maximum-impact)


	9. open source Cap

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Steve Rogers's intimate details are public knowledge.

A thought to ping your embarrassment squick:

Between 1945 and 2012, Steve Rogers was essentially open source software – everyone and anyone with an interest could acquire all of his details for the purpose of furthering science. [They’re like nuclear bomb details after a while – not a strategic secret so much as too expensive for everyone to use.] 

Not just details like his height or his weight or how fast his metabolism worked or how much he could dead-lift, but _all of it_ : where his hair grew and how fast, how much he peed and pooped and farted, what his ejaculate was composed of and how often he could produce it, what his sweat was like in terms of salt content or scent, _all of it_. Including photographs and sketches and x-rays – yes, the naked ones, too, if you needed them. The intimate details of Steve Rogers’s body were a basic teaching unit in every medical school for decades and nobody really thought about it because (a) he was long dead and (b) the first thing medical school does is desensitize students to such concerns via human dissection.

Erskine’s formula was kind of like Fermat’s Last Theorem – one of those Million Dollar Problems everyone who is anyone in a related field tries to solve. And Captain America had also been a war machine of unparalleled utility, so not only did you have the pure scientists going at it, you had the defense sector as well. The race to produce the next super-soldier was the focus of a lot of attention over the decades.

Steve is defrosted in 2011 and suddenly the omnipresence of his personal data matters. 

First to SHIELD, since Captain America is back to being a classified weapon, and Nick Fury spends a lot of effort and resources trying to figure out a way to manage that. It gets both easier and harder after Steve’ public return in 2012, but there is absolutely no way to unring that bell.

And then there’s the point at which Steve himself realizes just how much everyone can find out about him, how much is commonly known about his bodily functions, that he more or less has dick pics on the internet. (There are probably not that many actual dick pics and not widely disseminated, but if you know where to go for celebrity sex tapes and hacked nudes, there they are.) Steve can and will learn to roll with Twenty-First Century social norms, but he came of age in the 1930s and the TMI and oversharing of current social media culture probably weirds him the hell out. He’s still a private man and somewhat of an introvert and he would never participate in that culture if he had a choice, but… he is because he didn’t. 

The first piece of paper Steve Rogers signed after Abraham Erskine got him selected for Project Rebirth was the agreement to donate his corpse to medical research, whether that transition happened during the research or afterward. He was fine with this and would have agreed to more, but he sort of went into that not expecting to have to live with the consequences – this was all predicated on his death, after all. The group of scientists who had access to his intimate details was tiny – those SSR scientists cleared for Project Rebirth. And after Erskine’s assassination, that number was never very large. He never had to think about who knew things about him even Bucky had never known.

But here he is, a public figure if not necessarily one trying to live a celebrity lifestyle, and everywhere he goes, there’s a decent chance someone knows what he looks like in his underwear and how much he poops.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> [This was originally posted to Tumblr here](http://laporcupina.tumblr.com/post/147151309694/open-source-cap) if you'd like to like or reblog there.


End file.
